Is a threat to democracy . Well, to our system, you know, the assaults on the institutions starting with my own, the Intelligence Community and his characterization of us as nazis. The commentary he has made about the judiciary, and individual judges. The assault on the bureau are examples which are not constructive for our country. General clapper, i appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Very tough words from General Clapper there. If you are just joining us now, lets quickly lay out the top story tonight. The riveting testimony, did he make the case for the Obstruction Of Justice . And well get reaction from the
Intelligence Community, and first, dana bash with all the key moments. Reporter the former fbi director under oath and unvarnished, called the president who fired him, a liar. The administration then chose to defame me by saying that the organization was in disarray. That it was poorly led, that the work force had lost confidence in its leaders. Tho
nixon says, uh-huh. that is all. for that, he was forced to resign, even barry goldwater said you were telling the cia to disrupt an fbi investigation. so if uh-huh was enough to drive nixon out of office, what the hell did we just hear james comey testify on? jason, you clearly believe this is vindication for the president, i mean, i m guessing. call me crazy. look, i think the democrats servely over-played their hand today. we waited all day for some big shoe to drop and there just was not anything. once the folks in the media and the democrats get done running through the recap of the news cycle there is nowhere else to go. the biggest news today was the fact director comey cleared the president on a number of fronts. that was remarkable.
stories, but really no coverage at all. supporters of nixon, how long did i mean i know you ve often credited it s republicans who finally went to nixon, but rank and file, you know, citizens, were they still backing nixon all the way to the end? not quite to the end. what happened is they overwhelmingly reelected him. he carried every state but massachusetts and the district of columbia in the 72 election. slowly but surely there was an attrition in his support. you can see it in the polls. it really, though, isn t until the discovery of the tapes and the fight becomes about whether to turn over his tapes, and he finally gets caught in too many lies. and then he starts losing his supporters. just in terms of the interplay between a special prosecutor and congressional investigations, i mean we saw this in iran-contra as well where oliver north gets immunity. how does that interplay work? that s not happening again.
the director of the task force. carl, is this bigger than watergate? i don t question if it is bigger, i said this in some ways could be worse than watergate because it is about undermining our electoral process by a hostile foreign power. and destabilizing our most basic institutions which are free electionin elections. but also watergate itself was about undermining free elections. because the objective of the nixon conspiracy was to interfere in the democratic party s primaries and see as nixon s political opponent in 1972, to see george mcgovern be the nominee of the democratic party rather than senator edmond muskie, who was the frontrunner, and through a vast campaign of espionage, the nixon white house succeeded in helping mcgovern be
investigations, how does the interplay work? well, i had the same problem, cox tried to block my testimony. it was not archy cox s finest moment, but we were the beneficiaries of a lot of work done by the senate select committee on watergate. but as we ve been saying, watergate really puttered along, john and his friends did a good job of keeping a lid on watergate, putting out the story, third rate burglary, et cetera. it wasn t until the saturday night massacre that was a turning point in watergate, when people began to pay attention, because something extraordinary happened. not only did nixon fire the man who was investigating him, but the attorney general of the united states and the deputy attorney general resigned